Electronic note taking from network web pages

ABSTRACT

An electronic note taking application is described in which a user may make check box selections on web pages such that certain portions of the web pages are cumulatively collected in a clipboard. As the user navigates through various web pages on a website, the user can make highlighted and checkmark selections in the web pages, which are cumulatively collected for later use and reporting. At the end of a session, the entire selection of selected materials from all web pages during the session can be displayed to the user as a single cohesive document.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to information capturing and storage andmore particularly to data retrieval, capturing, formatting, storage,display, and reporting on selected data and information from multipleweb pages by a user.

BACKGROUND AND SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention addresses the problems associated withconveniently retrieving and storing information from web pages such asmay be retrieved from the Internet. Currently, one can go on to theWorld Wide Web and retrieve information in the form of web pages (whichis commonly formatted in the so-called HTML data format). It is commonfor a user who is investigating a particular subject on the World WideWeb to encounter a website having multiple web pages, describing, eachdepicting, and illustrating multiple and various aspects of the chosensubject matter. A common problem arises in that the user who isresearching the subject matter finds the information available to themboth overwhelming and not organized the way the user wants. That is,although the information on one particular web page may be organized inand of itself, portions of the information on that web page may beirrelevant to the user, portions may be cumulative to informationpreviously seen by, or not relevant to, the user, and the informationwill rarely have an organizational structure associated with any otherweb page previously seen by the user.

A common method of navigating the World Wide Web when doing subjectmatter research is unfortunately to printout print out all web pagesencountered so the user can, after the navigation session ends, sort andorganize the various web pages printed out into some sort of coherentstructure for use in the research. This process is time consuming andunnecessarily paper consuming.

The technology presently exists to call up a web page in a web browser,highlight a portion of text in the web page and copy that portion ontothe clipboard feature of a locally running operating system or computerapplication. However, if one wishes to create accumulation of textportions from a variety of web pages at a variety of web links, the usermust access the first web page, highlight a first portion of the firstweb page, copy the portion to the local clipboard, open a localapplication such as a word processing application, paste the clipboardedportion into a document of the word processing application, and thenrepeat the entire process for all of the remaining portions of all theremaining web pages of all of the remaining websites. In the end, theuser will have the document in the word processing application (or othersuch similar application) that contains accumulation of the desiredsubject matter clips. There is are, however, a variety of differentproblems associated with that procedure. First, the procedure isextremely tedious and cumbersome in highlighting, clipboarding, andpasting so many different portions of so many different web pages sincethe user must constantly flip back and forth between the web pagebrowser, and local word processing application to cut and paste thevarious portions of the web pages desired. In addition, the portions ofthe web pages may not necessarily be in formats conducive to pastinginto the particular application (such as the word processing applicationor other such application) being employed. Third, the highlight, cut andpaste procedure is not simple and user friendly.

The present invention provides a cumulative note taking feature,sometimes referred to herein by the nomenclature eNotes, which allows auser to identify portions of a web page that the user wishes to collect,and automatically collects and cumulates the portions into a clipboardupon a particular prompt. The accumulation of clipped portions can beprinted out or emailed to the user when they indicate that they arefinished with the web page.

In accordance with the present invention, the identification of theportions can be performed locally at a user workstation by a localapplication interacting with an eNotes enabled eNotes-enabled web pagedownloaded to the browser of the local workstation. The organization ofthe eNote portions are performed at a server such that theidentification of selected portions by any particular user or by anaccumulation of users can be monitored.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

These and other objects, features, and advantages of the presentinvention will now be described in conjunction with the drawings inwhich:

FIG. 1 is a prior art schematic of a present clipboard feature;

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of an example embodiment of the presentinvention; and

FIG. 3 is an example embodiment of a web page in accordance with oneexample of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PRESENTLY PREFERRED EMBODIMENT

FIG. 1 illustrates an example embodiment of a processing system thatincludes a clipboard feature. A workstation 10 includes an input device12 and a monitor 14 present in the vicinity of a user. The input device12 can be a keyboard, mouse, etc. The monitor 14 receives video signalseither from the workstation itself or from processor 16. The workstation10 communicates with the processor 16 and memory 20. Althoughworkstation 10, processor 16, and memory 20 are shown as independentblocks, they may be (though need not be) combined into a single unit.Further, all communications that occur between workstation 10, processor16, and memory 20 are not illustrated in FIG. 1, but only those signalswhich are particularly pertinent to understanding the present inventionare provided. The artisan will understand that many other kinds ofsignals are passed bi-directionally between the workstation, processorand memory.

As shown in FIG. 1, the user desires to select a portion of informationidentified on the monitor 14, the user highlights the portion on themonitor 14 using the input device 12. The workstation 10 then sends acopy request to processor 16, which invokes the local applicationprovided in application storage 22 to instruct the applicationprocessing element 18 as to the appropriate steps in the copy function.

The memory 20 includes different allocated storage area including astorage area for the application 22, information created or downloadedby the user in information storage 24 and information temporarily storedto clipboard storage 26. When the user of the workstation 10 sends thecopy request from the workstation to the processor 18, the applicationprocessing 18 under the instruction of the application loaded inapplication storage 22 reads the select information from the informationstorage 24 and overwrites the information into the clipboard storage 26.The application processing 18 uses the clipboard storage 26 as atemporary storage of information for the user. Thus, for example, if theuser is viewing a web page loaded in information storage 24, the usercould select a portion of that web page, and request the applicationprocessing element 18 to temporarily load that information into theclipboard storage 26 of the memory 20. The user could then paste theclipboarded information into some other application as desired. When theuser next request requests a copy of new web page information, theapplication processing element 18 will overwrite that new informationinto clipboard storage 26, thus losing the originally clipboardedinformation. In other words, in known clipboard functions, the user mustcopy the information from the clipboard into information storage 24under some other application (such as a word processing application,etc.) or the user will lose the clipboarded information during the nextoverwrite.

On the other hand, the present invention provides a cumulative notetaking function that operates under very user friendly processes. FIG. 2illustrates an example architecture in which the present invention may,by example, be employed. In FIG. 2, a server 32 communicates with aworkstation 42 over the Internet 30 in standard fashion such that theserver 32 delivers eNote enabled eNotes-enabled web pages to theworkstation storage 43 for viewing by the user at the workstationmonitor 44. In the example embodiment of FIG. 2, the workstation 42 alsoincludes an information capture function 46, which allows the user toidentify the portions of the information they want to capture aspersonalized notes. In the example embodiment of FIG. 2, the server 32includes a central processing and e-Notes page generation element 34 andvarious facilities associated therewith. In particular, communicatingwith central processing and eNotes generation element 34, are sessioncontrol element 37, storage element 38, and compiler element 39. Inaccordance with this example, eNotes enabled eNotes-enabled web pagesare created by the central processing and eNotes page creation function34 on the server. These web pages are downloaded from the Internet 30and loaded into a portion of workstation storage 43 like any other webpage. Thereafter, the user views the information at the monitor 44 andmay select, through the information capture facility 46, a portion ofany web page, or several portions of any web page or multiple web pagesas notes and information that the user wishes to collect for future use.Upon the prompt of the user, or alternatively upon the termination ofthe session, as monitored by the session controller 37, the informationidentified by the user to the information capture facility 46 is sent tothe session control facility 37 which will instruct the compilerfacility 39 to cumulatively compile and organize all of the informationcaptured by the information capture facility 46 during the entiresession. When completed, the compiler downloads an organized collectionof all the information selected by the user from the eNote enabledeNote-enabled pages visited during the session such that the informationis provided to the user of the workstation 40 in a cumulative and moreorganized fashion.

With the embodiment of FIG. 2, the web pages delivered by the server 32to the workstation 42 can be monitored by the server 32 such that theselections made by the user at workstation 42 can be tracked. Thus, whena user makes a selection of a particular portion of a web page, theserver 32 can retain in a separate portion of storage 38 under controlof central processing unit 34 a listing of all topics identified forselection by a user and all topics identified for selection by allusers. Such information can be used at a later time for statistical andinformational purposes.

FIG. 3 illustrates an example embodiment of a web page that comportswith an example of the present invention and may be used by theworkstation 42 of FIG. 2. In FIG. 3, the graphical representation 50includes an address line 52 where an eNotes enabledeNotes-enabled webpage has been found by a browser of a workstation. In the example pageshown in FIG. 3, an object oriented database has provided a listing offrequently asked questions 54. An example object oriented database isdisclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,890,149 entitled Organization Training,Coaching and Indexing System; and in U.S. Pat. No. 5,842,221 entitledDynamic Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) System, both by Schmonsees andboth incorporated herein by reference.

Of course, the format of the web page or the kinds of informationdisplayed may be entirely different and still be within the course ofthe present invention. The example of FIG. 3 is for illustrativepurposes in identifying how the selection and clipboarding aspects ofthe present invention preferably operate. Associated with eachfrequently asked question 54 shown in the graphical representation 50 isa check box 56 for taking eNotes. By pointing the user input device tothe check box 56 and clicking the check box 56, the user is able toidentify the particular selected frequently asked question 54 as aportion that the user wishes to take an eNote on. Boxes which have beenchecked 57 shows this user identification.

When the user is finished viewing the page, the user clicks the enableENotes icon 60 in order to inform the server 32 (FIG. 2) that the userwishes to have the identified portions organized for later use. Theportions identified by the user via the check boxes 56 are automaticallymoved into the compiler facility 39 as a cumulative listing ofinformation which is then organized and sent back to the workstationstorage 43 for display on the monitor 44 and future use of the user asthey dictate. At the same time the specific eNotes are recorded inserver storage 38 for future analysis.

FIG. 3 is an example only. Many other different types of data may beshown on the web page 50 that are not illustrated in FIG. 3 and yet arestill contemplated within the present invention. For example,illustrations in various file formats, audio in various file formats,video in various file formats, pictures, text, and any other form ofdata can be included in the page 50 with associated check boxes 54 orany other means of identification of portions by the user.

While the invention has been described in connection with what ispresently considered to be the most practical and preferred embodiment,it is to be understood that the invention is not to be limited to thedisclosed embodiment, but on the contrary, is intended to cover variousmodifications and equivalent arrangements included within the spirit andscope of the appended claims.

1. A web server, comprising: a web page facility to create web pages ofpredefined objects designed to be clipped and collected by a user andhaving check boxes associated with corresponding ones of a least some ofthe objects on said web pages; a storage resource to temporarily storeportions of selected web pages identified via the user selectionindicators as a cumulative list of objects captured while the selectedweb pages are displayed; and a compiler to send the user the cumulativelist of objects for display in an organized fashion and to collectinformation associated with historical selection activity of saidpredefined objects by multiple ones of said users.
 2. A web serveraccording to claim 1, further including: a session controller thatidentifies a commencement and termination of a user session employingthe server; and an information capture facility to electronicallydesignate the user identified portions of the selected ones of the webpages.
 3. A web server according to claim 2, wherein at least one of theinformation capture facility and the session controller also assigns atime stamp to the electronically designated user identified portions ofthe selected ones of the retrieved and displayed network web pages, andsends the time stamp to the storage resource for storage as an objectassociated with the corresponding captured object.
 4. A web serveraccording to claim 2, wherein at least one of the information capturefacility and the session controller also assigns a network address stampto the electronically designated user identified portions of theselected ones of the retrieved and displayed network web pages, andsends the network address stamp to the storage resource for storage asan object associated with the corresponding captured object.
 5. A webserver according to claim 2, further including a relational database ofobjects, links and pointers associated with the web pages, and whereinthe information capture facility cooperates with the relational databaseto provide selection boxes adjacent at least some of said objects, linksand pointers contained and displayed in the requested local network webpages; and said storage resource cooperates with the relational databaseto correlate user denoted selections in said check boxes with saidstorage of the corresponding objects displayed in the web pages.
 6. Aweb server according to claim 2, wherein at least one of the storageresource and the information capture facility maintain a cumulativelisting over a plurality of sessions of said identified portions of theselected web pages.
 7. A web server according to claim 2, furtherincluding an enable operator to provide a user selectable identifier toenable the information capture facility.
 8. A web server according toclaim 1, wherein: the storage resource is a database storing eachidentified portion of each selected web page as a database object.
 9. Aweb server according to claim 8, wherein the database further includes apointer list to identify the database objects as the cumulative list ofcaptured objects.
 10. A web server according to claim 1, wherein: thecheck boxes are displayed adjacent the corresponding objects displayedin the web pages; and said storage resource further includes arelational database to correlate user denoted selections in said checkboxes with said storage of the corresponding objects displayed in theweb pages.
 11. A web server according to claim 10, further including anenable operator to provide a user selectable identifier to enable thecheck boxes.
 12. A method of clipboarding information from network webpages, comprising: displaying selected web pages; providing check boxesgraphically associated with data objects displayed on said web pages;identifying a user entry associated with at least one of said checkboxes of at least one of said web pages; collecting informationassociated with the identified user entries for each of said selectedweb pages into a common electronic clipboard; and displaying in anorganized fashion all of the collected information associated with theidentified user entries from the common electronic clipboard.
 13. Amethod according to claim 12, further including: user enabling thedisplaying step via a graphical user interface button.
 14. A method ofclipboarding information from network web pages comprising: providing aweb browser routine operatively associated with a browser displaying aselected one of said network web pages; graphically pre-identifyingmultiple discrete pre-defined portions of said at least one web pagedisplayed with corresponding check boxes, said portions beinggraphically pre-identified prior to being displayed by said browser;recording user selections of said portions; collecting the selectionsinto a common electronic clipboard; and displaying in an organizedfashion all of the collected portions from the common electronicclipboard for a user for a session.
 15. A method as in claim 14 whereinthe displaying step is initiated by a user instruction to display thecollected portions.
 16. A method as in claim 14 wherein the collectingand displaying steps are initiated by a user instruction to collect anddisplay the collected portions.
 17. A method as in claim 14 wherein theuser-selected multiple discrete portions are portions of multiplesequentially user-selected and displayed network web pages.
 18. A methodas in claim 14, further including the step, upon user prompt, of purgingthe collected portions from the clipboard.
 19. A method of clipboardinginformation according to claim 16 wherein the routine is a plug-in. 20.A method of clipboarding information according to claim 14 furtherincluding the step of maintaining an unlimited number of the collectedportions over a plurality of browser sessions.
 21. A method ofclipboarding information according to claim 14 further including thestep of recording timestamp and URL information associated with thediscrete portions selected by the user.
 22. A method of clipboardinginformation according to claim 21 further including the step of sendingthe timestamp and URL to a network server.
 23. A method according toclaim 14 further including the step of sending at least an indication ofthe identified user selected portions to a server.
 24. A method ofclipboarding information according to claim 14 wherein: the routine is aplug-in; the method further maintains an unlimited number of thecollected portions over a plurality of sessions of the browser; themethod further stores timestamp and URL information associated with theuser selected portions; and the method further includes the step of atleast one of: sending the timestamp and URL information to a server, orsending at least an indication of the identified user selected portionsto a server.
 25. A method of clipboarding information from network webpages, the method being operable in a system in which a computer isoperatively connected to a network of computers, said computer includinga monitor, an input device, and a web browser, said network including atleast one server, the method comprising: providing said computer withsaid network web pages, each of said network web pages having beenspecifically created to include at least one predefined data object forclipping and collection by a user, said providing of said network webpages including providing user-selectable regions/areas associated withand distinct from at least some of said predefined data objectsdisplayed on a displayed network web page; detecting, at said computer,user selections of more than one of said user-selectable regions/areas;cumulatively collecting information associated with a plurality of saidpredefined data objects corresponding to the detected user selections;and maintaining the collected information in a storage resource forfuture use.
 26. A method as in claim 25 further comprising: displayingat least some of the collected information.
 27. A method as in claim 25wherein the information is collected in a common electronic clipboard.28. A method as in claim 25 wherein at least one said user-selectableregion/area comprises a check box.
 29. A method as in claim 25 whereinat least one said user-selectable region/area is graphically displayedas a square shape.
 30. The method of claim 25 wherein at least two ofsaid user selection actions take place in distinct sessions.
 31. Themethod of claim 25 wherein said collected information is maintained fora future use selected from the group comprising: recording for futureanalysis; printing; and emailing.
 32. A method of clipboardinginformation from a web page, the method being operable in a system inwhich a computer is operatively connected to a network of computers,said computer including a monitor, an input device, and a web browser,said network including at least one server, the method comprising:providing a web browser routine operatively associated with a browserdisplaying said web page; providing said web page, said web page havingbeen created to include multiple discrete pre-defined portions havingcorresponding user-selectable regions/areas; graphically pre-identifyingsaid multiple discrete pre-defined portions of said web page displayedwith said corresponding user-selectable regions/areas, said pre-definedportions being graphically pre-identified prior to being displayed bysaid browser; each said user-selectable region/area being distinct fromeach other user-selectable region/area and being distinct from saidcorresponding pre-defined portions, recording information associatedwith a plurality of user selections of a plurality of said pre-definedportions; cumulatively collecting the information associated with theplurality of user selections of said plurality of predefined portions;and maintaining information associated with a plurality of saidselections for subsequent use.
 33. A method as in claim 32 wherein saidsubsequent use is selected from the group comprising: printing said userselections; displaying said user selections; and e-mailing said userselections.
 34. A method as in claim 32 wherein said collecting of saiduser selections occurs in response to a user request.
 35. A method as inclaim 34 wherein said collecting of said user selections occursautomatically.
 36. The method of claim 32 wherein at least two of saiduser selection actions take place in distinct sessions.
 37. The methodof claim 32 wherein at least one of said user-selectable region/areacomprises a check box.
 38. The method of claim 32 wherein at least oneof said user-selectable region/area is graphically displayed as arectangular shape.
 39. The method of claim 32 wherein said collectedinformation is maintained for a future use selected from the groupcomprising: recording for future analysis; printing; and emailing.
 40. Amethod of clipboarding information from network web pages, the methodbeing operable in a system in which a computer is operatively connectedto a network of computers, said computer including a monitor, an inputdevice, and a web browser, said network including at least one server,said information comprising individual search results, the methodcomprising: providing said network web pages, each of said network webpages having been specifically created to include at least onepredefined data object for clipping and collection by a user; displayinga plurality of selected network web pages; providing a predefinedclipping function associated with the search results displayed on saidnetwork web pages; identifying user selection actions initiating saidpredefined clipping function associated with more than one of saidsearch results of at least one of said network web pages; cumulativelycollecting information associated with the identified user searchresults for each of said selected web pages into a common electronicclipboard; and displaying all of the collected information associatedwith the identified user selection actions from the common electronicclipboard.
 41. The method of claim 40 wherein at least two of said userselection actions take place in distinct sessions.